This Cockeyed World

By Jim Christy

COCKEYED: askew, crooked, intoxicated, absurd; marked by bends or angles; incongruous, not straight. In other words, Jim Christy, Canada's most iconoclastic and irreverent poet, views this cockeyed world the way it is; not only with 20/20 but x-ray vision and often through laughter and tears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781550717181

Jim Christy

Born in Richmond, Virginia on July 14, 1945, Jim Christy grew up in South Philadelphia, a tough area featured in his autobiographical novel Streethearts. Christy came to Canada in October of 1968, to evade the Vietnam war draft. He's travelled the world extensively, is a prolific author and artist. Christy is now a Canadian citizen.

Book preview

This Cockeyed World

Jim Christy

GUERNICA

TORONTO – BUFFALO – BERKELEY – LANCASTER (U.K.) 2013

Contents

Title

End of the World Airfield

Heading North

‘Couver Blues

I Had Ears

Girl on the seashore

The Heart of the World

Head From Mata Hari

The Viking’s Mother

Tomorrow is Forever

Ready or Not

This Cockeyed World

Lost Channel Road

Strong Arm

Young at Heart

Mute and Staring

You and Your Stuff

Jim the Drifter

Crypto-zoology

The Writerly Life

Crossroads

Freemantle

The Juras

Knife Fighter

Archie Marries Veronica

Tucumcari Roadhouse

List of Contributors

The Lady on Radio Road

A Hundred Acres and Some Kind of Fool

Strip Bar Haiku

Funny Old Memory

Wooden Indians

Camilo’s Bitch

And Let the Games End

Early Music

Even-Toed Ungulates

Bus Ride

One Gaunt White man

Where to, Zoe?

Our First Night at the Buchan

Big Nicky

Greenberg’s Drugstore

Another Round

Runagate Again

Tiger Man

Afternoon of the Blind Man

Guardalavaca Night

Forests

About Jim Christy’s Previous ColleCtions

End of the World Airfield

Seven planes, all sizes, spread

Over the tarmac after

The storm, like birds

On a white cashmere overcoat.

Undercarriages yellow

Or red, like spoonbills, white-

Tailed kites and ivory gulls.

There’s a snowy owl and a common

Tern. One woodcock come out

Of a wood of glass trees. The closest,

Like a pelican, must be

A cargo plane. It’s so quiet

You could hear a parachute

Open. Pilots all gone.

Mechanics vanished. Attendants

Wheeled away long ago.

There’s no one in the tower.

I’m alone between

Arrivals and Departures,

Next to the coffee machine. It might

Be the end of the world. I

Hear it tell me angels

Have made snow angels

On the runway.

Heading North

I’m headed for Northern Ontario. Nobody’ll

Think to look for me there. They’ll check

The old familiar southern places they think

My heart still embraces but where I usually

Just got run out of town, or dropped

At the outskirts out beyond the empty multi-

Plex and the last nail salon with an: And don’t come back.

Atta wa pis kat not Sarawak.

No one’ll recognize me under all those

Clothes, I’ll be just another Yo-ne-gis

With an icicle hanging from his nose.

My lips will look like a frozen river

Reflecting the grey blue sky.

Things have gotten too hot

In Furnace Falls and I just

Get the blues in Mississippi Station.

I remember the time in Ompah,

Outside the general store when the guitar

Fell on my head and woke me up. I’ll

Pass through Tichbourne and claim

To be someone else. You’re up there

Somewhere, I know.

I’ll find you and take you to Maskara,

Buy you a diamond from DeBeers after

You paint your big brown eyes. I want

To see how you look lying

On a Bear Skin Lake. I’m older

Than you but eager and I’ll

Prove it in Summer Beaver.

Ours will be a Marathon love, we’ll

Write our names on the Chalk River

And wake up Ati ko kan pledging Our troth with Caribou bone beats

On mastodon tusks.

Webequie

Mosonee

Moose Factory

Let’s visit the birds

On Akimiski

We’ll ride sweet coltsfeet

Along the ice roads, be rash,

Make love behind the leather leaf.

You’ll whisper:

WuhnumminWuhnummin

And tenderly I will sigh:

Kitchenuh may koosib

How will that sound at Ear Falls?

Nearby’s the Long Legged River

They named after you. Yes,

It calls to me north of Kaba baka.

We’ll make camp on the shores of

The big water, you’ll say you’re

Rescuing the name from an old

English captain, call it after me:

Jim Bay. Let’s take the dogs

To Fort Albany, get blankets for

Our antlers. We’ll grow old in a lodge

Of skins, paint symbols on the hides:

The sun, the moon, the moose and

Wolverine, animal